Monday, September 29, 2008

On being amit_123

Krish Ashok's excellent blog here first mentioned amit_123. A typical North Indian who hates everything from Madras and feels that the North is superior in many ways than just the weather (amit_123 hates Chennai’s weather).

We have all heard about the typical South Indian as well (I am from Hyderabad and proud of it), the one who hates learning Hindi and though knows it won't utter a word of it. Both these types of aforementioned people are probably in every Indian. But then I think that is just me giving it not a second thought and letting rip the very human trait of being judgemental. But then are these types of people truly around? Do these people think of themselves as superior in some way?

Living in Australia was the first time I got to meet a very good cross section of Indians. Being from Hyderabad meant for me to know how to speak in Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani and Telugu and determining the part of India where a person comes from just by listening to their first few words of Hindi. I have met both the typical amit_123 who refer to anything from the South as Madrasi and the Tamilian who wouldn't speak one word of Hindi though being a running database of ShahRukh Khan movies.

So, when I first read about amit_123 I didn't think of these people, but promptly left a comment as amit_123 myself to redirect some traffic to my blog.

The great thing about being in Hyderabad is one doesn't run into any amit_123 or Madrasi for that matter. They would feel very comfortable being themselves in most cases as there is free run of good South Indian food with equally good number of Hindi speaking people around. So, no cause to complain. A Hyderabadi probably wouldn't go and live anywhere else in India (may be overseas yes) and if he did, he probably would complain about the lack of proper Biryani joints thus making himself a hyd_123.

I admit that I stumbled across Krish Ashok's blog quite a few times and also read Great Bong regularly, but the first few times have dismissed them as being very regional. But now I have kicked the amit_123 out of myself and do see the better parts of these blogs.

On watching a report about the unrecognised new country of Abkhazia the other day, I heard how the president of this region was saying that they are culturally and linguistically different from Georgia and thus are a different country. This made me realise how the same thing is true about different parts of India, but we still live as together as one, not just now but have been doing so for thousands of years.

So when you find an amit_123 or a Madrasi who complains, smile and take him out to eat Biryani, perfect blend of North and South. You can't change their complaining though. It's just human.